


Brimstone

by prieta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:50:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prieta/pseuds/prieta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House Targaryen’s last daughter grows her fangs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brimstone

**Author's Note:**

> A\N: Quick descriptive practice, just character voices and actually integrating my descriptions into working fic. I also understand this is a bastardization of RR Martin book canon, which I apologize for. I haven't gotten around to reading the books [making me a very very bad fan] but Daenerys gives me so many emotions I couldn't not.
> 
> In this AU aka my convenient headcanon where everything fits so I can fuck with them and gleefully throw around metaphors, Daenerys's mother didn't die during childbirth and she and Viserys lived with their cray father and mother in King's Landing until Dany is...maybe six?? Rhaegar is canon-age therefore never there. Robert's Rebellion happens arouunndd when Dany is six and they are shipped off across the Narrow Sea and everything else works as usual. I apologize, i had to justify myself somehow.

Brimstone

 

\---

 

When they killed her mother, they burned her. It was retribution for all the women and children that her father had incinerated in his kingship, says their host. They say she burned for days and days, nailed to the cross her husband had used on his own victims. Didn’t say a word throughout; that was the dragon’s blood in her says her brother, ever proud, but Daenerys knows. She must have screamed as they all did, the particular blood-curdling wail as their nerves singe and smolder, as they smell their own flesh roasting music to their father’s ears.

 ‘So many families, so many innocents,’ their newest host eyes the two of them from behind his wine goblet with an ugly sneer on his face. They are kneeling, the both of them. The soft fabric of the carpet pressed against her cheek and her brother’s nails digging into the back of her neck, spines bowed in submission. 

‘And what do you have to say for yourselves,’ he continues. When they came to his doorstep he had laughed and spat on them. He, too, was an exile from King’s Landing. When the Mad King gave him his customary offer he had taken it and fled across the Narrow Sea- cockless with the blood of his own children on his hands. He’d offered to take Visery’s manhood, too, but instead had them crawl on their knees through his courtyard. Had them supplicate to him for their dinner, invited his guests to watch them, the proud heir of the Targaryen bloodline, kin of the Dragon-born begging like dogs after their hand. 

‘Soon,’ says Viserys, after the dinner begins and they are shuffled back to their rooms. He peers into the mirror and wipes fruitlessly at his dirty forehead, face flushed and nearly shaking. ‘Soon we will be rid of him.’ 

His pale hair drips wine steadily on the floor. She can feel it in hers too, beginning to congeal to her forehead. 

‘He feeds us,’ she tells him. ‘The others won’t even bother. If we leave, where will we go?’

‘Back,’ he scrubs furiously at his hair beginning to pink- his pride, once, proof of lineage that he would brush vainly every day until it gleamed as beautifully as a girl’s- yanks out strands of it by the handful that flutter to the floor. 

‘They’ll kill us.’ 

He spits, turning on her with his rising fury. ‘You sniveling git- show some spine. We will return and when we do we’ll make them kneel at  _our feet_. We’ll gut all who oppose us and present their corpses on sticks.’ His whisper starts to crescendo, shaking with fury, stalking in close enough even in the dark she can see the pale whites of his eyes.

‘It is our  _birthright_. Our  _due_. Do you not understand?’ 

She presses her hands to his shoulders as he leans over her, offers a placating 'of course, we will,' but she's glancing back frantically at the door and the servants behind it as they rustle restlessly with his rising voice.

He shrugs her hand off angrily. 'Viserys, please,' she whispers, but he has already turned away. She curls her fingers in her palms, the wine drying in the creases sticky as blood- we will burn them like they burned our mother and brother, his brother promises her and she shushes him, says  _yes, yes, of course we shall_.  

\-- 

There’s actually quite a lot of flesh to the human body. Hair and nail and skin and fat- all that water. A good-sized man set to light would burn for hours, days if it was a large man and a small fire. Children burn much faster with much less smoke, dry like kindling. Brittle little bones. After the first few hours they give up screaming or their vocal cords are melted together. Almost a calm experience then. Arms spread, feet dangling peacefully their skulls lit from the inside. The bones have water in them and remain intact until the last moment. Like great specters or some ghastly decorations floating around the throne room like werelights. 

Her mother wouldn’t let them into the throne room but it didn’t help. Dozens of people sent into the throne room every month, often many at a time. She would ask who they were but her brother would dismiss it. They were criminals, all of them. Murderers and traitors and rapists, they would burn in Seven hells anyway. 

When they ran out of prisoners in the dungeons they turned to their families, old political enemies who had been pardoned suddenly sent a missive postmarked from King’s Landing, common street rats hungry and stupid enough to steal bread under the Mad King’s nose. Families escorted in all at once, daughters who hid their faces in their mother’s dresses, men who wept and begged for their children’s lives, young boys with barely any hair on their faces sniveling like babes. She and her brother would hide behind the curtains and watch, snuck right up to the door entrance and you could see a sliver of it, the room black as pitch the whole floor a scorch mark. 

The smell of it permeated the castle like a miasma— the brimstone they rubbed into their bodies in to make them burn more evenly, the wicker oil they coated their clothes in, the half-sweet smell of roasting meat. You couldn’t forget a smell like that. In Braavos Ser Darry welcomes them with a feast. The pigs roasted on their spits in the pit built into the room and she thinks of that- their father reclining on his chair, bodies strung up around him like unholy lanterns, lit like angels. They hadn’t been on the run for more than a week, says their benefactor, though she had felt it was so much longer. Perhaps at that very moment her mother was tied to one of those crosses, still burning as the servant girls whispered to each other that she was, her beautiful face melted like a candle. She would burn like the rest of them, Daenerys knows. The fire did not discriminate; it knew no lineage. Under the fire’s heels all humans were equal. 

\--

After Ser Darry dies they are evicted. 

‘But where will we go,’ Viserys demands, fruitlessly trying to stop the servants hauling their bags into the courtyard. 

Ser Darry’s son shrugs. ‘Anywhere,’ he says. ‘It does not matter to us anymore.’ 

‘We are royalty,’ he says, hotly. ‘You can’t do this to us.’

‘Yes, we can,’ the son replies. His eyes are hard. He gestures and the servants are yanking them away, her by her hair as she yelps and twists under the man’s grip. ‘Your family is a pestilence. Madness festers in your blood like a pox; how many children had your father slaughtered for sport?’  

‘Please,’ begs Daenerys.

‘I should do what is right and cull the last of your stock,’ he continues. ‘But my father loved your fucked up family, so I won’t. Consider it the last act of kindness any would do for you. Get out of my sight.’ Another wave of his hand and the door is slammed. It is a long moment as they stand, speechless, noses in front of the gate. 

‘Brother,’ she whispers. Viserys is shaking. He kicks the door viciously, his soft boots thunking fruitlessly on the wood. It doesn’t open again.

\-- 

Volantis is muggy and damp, too sticky. It makes her miserable; every day she wakes up wither her hair slicked to her back and her dress stuck to her thighs as if she had had molasses poured on her. But here, at least, there are people who would take them. This close to old Valyria their name still holds some meaning. Their newest host has assigned them tutors, as if they were five again. As if she hadn’t seen what the Braavosi and Pentoshi thought of her name. 

Sheafs of moldy crumbling scrolls, damp from whatever annex they had been held in. An ages old story, repeated over and over like a prayer. There is Aerys the Mad, son of Jaehaerys son of Aegon the Unlikely brother of the Aerion son of Maekar who gained victory from the crown against his own kin in Blackfyre, bastard of the corrupt Aegon the Unworthy, successor of Viserys successor of Baelor successor of Daeron the conqueror of Dorne, who wore on his head Aegon’s own crown. They say Daeron was only fourteen when he ascended the throne, sixteen when he oversaw the dissolution of Dorne. A Targaryen true to his blood. Their tutors at home insisted on feeding them the same history; her brother had loved it and she hated it. It doesn’t seem to matter to any of them that all their tapestries, all their family trees, are buried under miles of ash and silt. 

Aegon the Conqueror himself two centuries ago whose rule began the new age of Westeros. They say his dragon Balerion whom he rode into battle was the largest of all the dragons in history; big enough its shadow overhead could overtake King’s Landing, a wingspan of leagues. When it opened its mouth it would swallow lakes whole. They say long ago the first Targaryen mixed his blood with a wild dragon, and for then after dragons and Targaryens rode together. 

‘The blood of Valyria,’ says their tutor. ‘Don’t forget it, the two of you. It is the ultimate crime that they cast the ruling family’s children to the dirt.’  

‘Yes,’ agrees Viserys, eyes shining. 

‘One day you shall rule again,’ their tutor continues.

‘Isn’t that right, sister,’ Viserys asks her.

They say that Targaryens have the blood of dragons; every generation there is a child born from fire. They say that was their brother Rhaegar, and when they cast his body into the flames alongside the rest of his family it would not burn. No matter how they hacked or what oil they poured onto it the ropes holding his body would crumble to ash but still his corpse remained, pristine as the day he had died. 

‘Yes,’ agrees Daenerys, miserably. ‘Of course.’

\--

Viserys would tell her her mother cried when she was born. When they were children he reminds her of this with a child's glee, wondering if she had been bad right when she came out of the womb. He tells her their mother hadn’t wanted a daughter.

‘And why should she, when she had me and Rhaegar,’ he said. ‘Girls are stupid. Everyone says so. Sons are better.’ 

She ran to her mother in her room, crying tearfully and clutching great fistfuls of her dress as she wailed fitfully,

‘Viserys said you didn’t want me,’ she sobbed. ‘Is that true?’

‘Oh, my sweetling, that’s so far from the truth,’ she remembers her mother saying as she smoothed her fingers in Daenerys' hair. She remembers the scratchy feel of her mother's sleeve on her cheeks, how the lace hurt but she didn’t pull away as she hiccupped in her mother’s arms. 

 ‘Then why did you cry when I was born?’ 

Years later Daenerys would recognize the brief flash of agony that coursed through her mother’s face and froze her features. It was grief, perhaps, when she knew at last what her mother had to grieve about.

‘I was sad,’ she whispered, curling her fingers around Daenerys' cheeks and pressing their foreheads together. Her mother’s forehead had been cool and damp. ‘The first moment I held you I loved you so very much. I didn’t want to share you with anyone but I knew the whole world would want their part of you.’ 

‘I’m still yours,’ Daenerys said but her mother just smiled weakly.

‘You’ll know when you grow older,’ she said. ‘Having a little girl is the greatest, saddest blessing.’

\-- 

They are in Pentos again. She asks Viserys how he had managed to get them into this city again but he wouldn’t tell her. It is the servant drawing her bath who whispers it to her, pity for the poor girl being bartered as a whore to the Dothraki.

‘Would you really do this to me,’ she asks him, near tears. He sneers, his face cruel. She had run to him right out of her bath, and the cold salt wind stings her cheeks.

‘You don’t understand anything,’ he says. ‘What would a pretty little bitch like you know of destiny?’ This is a different Viserys, not the boy who would pull her hair but still sneak her tarts before she went to bed, not the boy who would stand by the gates and challenge every man in armor to a duel with his wooden training sword. His face is almost reptilian in its rage, eyes bright as if with fever. She woke up beside him one day and found a different man.  

‘I am destined to rule,’ he tells her. ‘I’ll make you my stepping stone if I have to. That is what it means to have power.’

\--

 _Power_ , she thinks, dizzily. Her husband and her unborn child dead before she could have them. She has been orphaned again and the woman who did it kneels at her feet and spits in her face. There is a great roaring in her ears like the whole Dothraki Sea were rushing past her head.  She can feel the grief welling up within her like a tidal wave, great and harsh. 

‘And what are you going to do about it,’ she taunts. ‘Little whore?’ 

She moves before she can think of it. The slap knocks the wind out of the witch, she slumps to the floor in surprise, and Daenerys knows with a brilliant finality that she could go on. If the witch got up again she would hit her again. It would be her right. The roaring in her ear rises in volume like the howl of some beast.  _Power_ , she thinks. All her life she had been stepped on and kicked like a whimpering pup, ground under heels with the worm, as if she were a bastard's get. As if she were nothing; but she is greater. She is Stormborn. She is _Khaleesi_.

‘I gave you your life, and you took my family,’ she tells her. ‘You will pay for it. I swear this to you upon the blood of my family.’ ' _They will all burn,'_  said her brother. ' _We are dragons_.'

She has her tied to the plaza, has her watch in anticipation as they stack rope and kindling around her, as they strap her to the casket of the man she killed. In the light of the dying sun with flames between them Daenerys turns to her again and she can see it in her eyes. The shift like sea change in her beady black eyes. The witch looks at her and is afraid. _  
_

'Are you frightened,' Daenerys asks. She feels the smile on her mouth. The precision with which she speaks her words surprises even her. Her hands on the torch are completely steady. Not a tremor in them.

‘You won’t do it,’ the witch whispers, swallowing. In the half-light her throat quivers.

‘Oh yes,’ Daenerys says. Knows the rightness of it before she even finishes her sentence. She is not dizzy or frightened anymore. She is no longer that cowering babe, that quivering quim. She can feel the rage sinking into her blood, as sharp and as bright as a blade excising her of the last of her own fears.

‘I shall,’ she tells her, raising her hand. ‘And you shall scream.’

\--

‘My lady,’ laughs Zaro, condescendingly. After his fourth cup his tongue had loosened and he lounges on his chaise, gesturing with careless hands. Not so careful to guard his tongue. ‘You could not tell me you were actually expecting them to give you ships. You really are a brave girl.’ He raises his hands and servants appear at his heels

‘Whyever not,’ she asks, irritated. The servants leans over them, his ostentatious gold collar, a Quarth fashion statement, swinging in the air between them. Zaro nods them away and they go without question. A cocky man, this merchant. A man who knows his place as one above others. 

‘You have to admit you are a bit of a bad bet,’ he continues, lazily, leering at her. ‘Beautiful as you are, your family has quite a history to it. You know the old saying- when a Targaryen is born, the Fates flip a coin? Your father, I hear, lost his toss.’

 _So did_   _my brother_ , she thinks.  _So did my mother_. The Targaryens were a family who loved their sons too much. Another saying. They cast their daughters into the mud so more sons would rise from the dirt. Boys born with the body of their mothers trampled underfoot. She thinks of her mother’s beautiful white hair. the stuff of countless poets' ballads- spun silver, pure as Valyrian steel, they would sing. When Daenerys was four her father thought her mother had been trying to poison him and he’d grabbed her head and cut it all off. Took off an ear lobe too, a punishment for convicts. The earring flew off somewhere; she can’t remember if he ever apologized but she remembers that she spent hours looking for it but could never find it. Her mother never wore earrings after that. It was too short to do anything to afterwards; as short as a boy’s. Her mother, with the sharp edge of her hair feathering up all around her chin like a halo. Her mother who had wept when she was born, who hadn't wanted another daughter thrown to the House. 

‘Well,’ she says, smiles with teeth. ‘I won mine.’

\--

They light the funeral pyre and it is beautiful. The witch caught in the middle suspended like a fish on the hook dangled to the leaping flames. She begins her prayers, face tilted resolutely to the air like a dying saint ready for absolution but Daenerys knows. She will scream. They all scream.

The flames whirl higher and higher into the air in a maddening dance. The smell of burning flesh like the vague beginnings of childhood. The ash, the dust, the heat of it warm like a caress; how her father loved these very flames too. She tips her head back and closes her eyes as the witch’s prayers begin to falter, her voice warbling and cracking until she gives up and begins thrasing against her binds and howling in agony. Perhaps she will beg but there will be no one to hear her. She will die by immolation as all humans will, as they are all destined to but Daenerys will not- it has been written before she was even born, a knowledge carved deep in the marrow of her bones, written into the very walls of her veins.

The first step into the pyre she hears the tribe tittering in shock, feels it lick a needle-like warmth close but not quite pain at the palms of her feet. She can feel the moment when it recedes and bends under her feet again. Fire will not hurt her. She is greater.

\--

When Daenerys was five she snuck into the kitchen on a dare— Viserys and his gang of bully friends knew if she got caught she wouldn’t rat them out and would take the beating- and up-ended a pot of boiling soup all over the floor. Her mother had rushed in to see her kneeling in the viscous, still-bubbling mess on the floor staring at her arms bewilderedly as they steamed. It was only after she had wiped the mess from her arms and seen pale, clean skin underneath did she begin crying. 

‘Oh, my sweetling,’ her mother had wept, ‘the Gods are too cruel to you.’ Her own hands were red and patchy from the burns but she clutched Danaery’s wet hands to her breast, soaking the front of her shirt. They knelt together her mother’s tears dripping all over her cheeks and onto her hands which must have hurt, the soup soaking their garments and the servants outside still panicking. 

 ‘Promise me,’ her mother had begged her, fingers tightening around her so that it hurt. ‘You’ll keep this a secret. Please. If they knew they’d eat you up and spit out your bones. This world isn’t fit for sweet girls like you.’ 

‘Promise me, please. Promise.’

She had looked into her mother’s purple eyes alarmed by the tears in them, and she promised a thousand times over as her mother wept.

They usher her new army out of the city, into the hills of Astapor. Their marching has pulled up great plumes of red dust that stings her eyes and chases her dragons as they wing above her.

‘North to Yunkai, and then Mereen,’ says Jorah by her side. ‘Then we’ll be done with Slaver’s Bay.’ 

‘And we’ll set sail,’ says Daenerys.

He looks at her, sharply. She knows she surprised him, in Astapor. ' _Not as kind as you thought_ ,' she thinks. But it is no consequence. She has an army, and soon she will have the throne. She can feel it in her blood, like a siren call- it is destiny. If they would slam doors in her face she will raze them down. 

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And then we set out for King’s Landing.’ Perhaps she had disappointed him. After Drogo’s death it was obvious he’d wanted to keep her to himself, a pretty thing free at last for the taking. Perhaps lead her army in her name. 

‘Yunkai, then,’ she tells him. ‘And we can take our ships from Meereen.’  

He opens his mouth, as if to say more but she taps her heels and her horse turns away. Below them the Unsullied march, a tidal wave of feet and undulating spears. Helmets gleaming in the setting sun bright as flames and her dragons swoop overhead, disturbing the ground further. Astapor behind them lies sprawled across the ground like a skeleton, sacked and gutted. 

 _‘You were right, mother.’_  Daenerys thinks.  _‘This world is not a place for little girls. But I am not a girl. I am a dragon.’_

_\--_

FIN

 


End file.
